Games-to-Movies Update on God of War and Metal Gear Solid

A pair of games to movies update for all you gamers out there, the first involving a possible “Metal Gear Solid” movie.

Just in time for the 25th Anniversary of the first Metal Gear Solid game, producer Avi Arad (“X-Men”, “Spider-Man”) announced that he, along with Columbia Pictures and Kojima Productions, are currently working on a live-action adaptation of the popular stealth game “Metal Gear Solid”.

Says Arad on the adaptation:

For many years I fought to bring comics to theaters – and video games are the comics of today. We will take our time and tell the story with all the nuances, ideology, cautionary tales needed.

Really? Comic books to movies have become so passe that games have now taken over? Maybe in Arad’s mind. Try telling that to all those Hollywood producers scrambling to announce a new movie version of every comic book in existence. Oh, the silly things movie producers say.

Anyhoo. The first “Metal Gear Solid” first surfaced in 1998 from publisher Konami, starring the improbably named (but to the game’s Japanese developers, no doubt entirely plausible) Solid Snake, a legendary “infiltrator” who relies on stealth for much of his missions. The game was a critical and commercial hit and went on to spawn a handful of sequels and spin-offs.

Maybe they can get Jean Claude Van Damme to play the character in the movie version. I hear Solid Snake was originally based on him. [Game Informer]

Meanwhile, what’s going on with the “God of War” movie? Well, recently hired writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (of “Feast” and “Saw” fame) sat down to discuss the script and their ideas for the movie. I gotta tell you, as much as I like these two guys, the fact that they cut their teeth on gory (and in some cases, cheap) horror flicks kinda makes me nervous for “God of War”.

So, what’s their approach to Kratos, “God of War’s” hero? Humanizing him, according to Dunstan:

In the same way that Batman was grounded with Christopher Nolan’s rendition, we were attempting to do that with Kratos so that when we meet him — like they’re doing in this newest game, which is sort of a prequel to the original — we’re seeing him before he became the Ghost of Sparta, when he was just a Spartan warrior and he had family and kids.

Interesting. So get to know the crazy God-killing mass murderer first.

Melton chimes in:

In the game… there’s that attack from the barbarians and Kratos has to call upon Ares to help him. Really, that’s going to be our first act break. Before then, he’s going to be mortal, and he’s going to have his family. We’re going to learn about him and understand how he operates. So it’s potentially 30 minutes — give or take — of building up this character so that, when he does turn and becomes the Ghost of Sparta, we understand him as a human and we understand the journey that he’s going to take. We’re emotionally invested, so that it could go beyond just this one movie.

They’re writers, they have a lot of ideas, it doesn’t necessarily mean their ideas will actually make it to the screen. Writers always start a script with huge ideas and an eye toward writing believable characters; all that, though, tend to get lost in the transition to your local theater. Chances are, the studio will end up hiring someone else to rewrite their script. That’s usually how it works with big-budget action movies, and “God of War” is said to be looking at a $150 million budget. That’s huge.

Feel free to read the rest of the interview over at IGN if you wanna hear more from the two crazy kids.